Living Through Tomorrow
by Jackrabbit2011
Summary: Time waits for no recovering heart, Rose Tyler has to learn, and she has to learn it fast...
1. At Her Age

**A/N: Part Three of my Forever Cycle... enjoy! **

**Disclaimer: Plot and nothing else would be mine... shame. **

**At Her Age **

The universe is an odd place. A Wilderness, wild and feral and desolate. A mother's soft, caring embrace. A lover's electric touch, and a seducer's expert caress. All jumbled together in the darkness.

Rose knows this, or thinks she does. She thinks that she knows what the universe could possibly perhaps be. One day, maybe. Or yesterday.

She just doesn't know what it is yet.

**I **

When she was six months old, Rose Tyler met loss for the first time.

She saw it in her mother's face- Grief, Pain, Anger.

Because her dad was dead; and yet he lived on, in the shadows underneath her mother's eyes. Even when he wasn't there anymore, his name was forever on the edges of Jackie's lips, the periphery of all her sentences.

He remained, long after the accident, and yet he was not there. Existing enough to make Jackie incapable of forgetting and moving on, but not enough for her to remember how to smile again.

Rose Tyler's childhood orbited Pete Tyler.

**II**

At three, Rose killed a worm.

She stabbed at it with a spade, curious to see what happened when this wriggling pink thing that had appeared from the earth and was utterly disgusting was cut in half.

She watched it writhe around, and did not like it.

It set alight some recently inactive feelings that she didn't know what to make of.

When the worm finally stopped moving, Rose wondered why. Why it so suddenly stilled, after minutes of struggling to cling to the fabric of its life, it had chosen to give up and let go.

She sat in the mud and pondered why-and how- things knew when it was right to let go.

**III **

At five, Rose's Aunty Meredith became the Dearly Beloved.

As they stood in the rain, in a garden with black, square flowers with their funny etchings, Rose wondered quietly to herself why her Aunty had wanted to go to sleep, here in the rain and the mud. And why, of all places, in a plain, dark wooden box.

Her mother explained to her that Meredith was Dead.

Rose stood, her arms itching from the raw cotton of her horrible black dress, goosebumps rising as rain continued to turn her hair into scraggly rat tails, and wondered. She looked around the semi-circled of sad, broken people, and she wondered what Dead meant.

**IV **

Four years later, and she realised this concept of 'grief', and 'loss' was a world wide thing.

People, everywhere- every colour, every nationality, every height and weight and character, they all hurt, and they all faded into distant memories.

For the first time, at the ago of nine and a bit, Rose Tyler was afraid.

A deep, gnawing fear that bubbled up inside her, and she did not like it. There was this horrible feeling on the faces of people around her- behind the laughs and the tears and the smiles, she saw it. The fear of the darkness and what it brought.

She could not run from it.

Couldn't hide.

She couldn't sob into her mother's arms, because, Rose realised then, that one day, her mother would be just like the others, and become just tantamount to the expressions of the faces of these people around her daughter.

It was then that Rose realised not even Jackie, her beloved mother, could protect her from everything.

**V **

At twelve, Rose sat on her window, watching the rain, and missed her father.

He was the thing that everyone else had, and yet she didn't even have memories.

Why did other girls her age have dads who took them shopping and bought them clothes and teddy bears and helped them with homework? Why did they deserve to still have their dads, when Rose had _never_ had hers?

How was that fair, and who decided it?

Rose didn't know. Didn't know, and probably never would.

She screamed and threw her things about; turning her room into her all her rage and pain and jealousy and confusion depicted.

And then she cried.

Cried for all the memories she could've made; all the conversations she and her daddy would never, ever have. Cried for all the people out there, past her window and the rain, who were exactly like her, and also couldn't have been more different. Let all her tears spill out, finally allowed to. Because it wasn't fair.

At twelve, she realised nothing was.

**VI**

At thirteen, she started to get noticed.

Eyes followed her in the corridors at school. Boys sidled up to her and started conversations with her.

And Rose Tyler felt odd.

These people- their male minds so superficial, so superfluous that she was boggled by their sheer mannerisms. She did not understand them at all.

Why, after all this time, were they interested in her now?

Well, the obvious answer was the boys were thirteen and by now, their one-track minds were almost fully developed.

But it was deeper than that.

In time, Rose came to understand it was because she was a novelty.

She was the quiet girl with only one parent. Whose mother had been depressed whilst she was growing up.

That was why the conversations, she found, always ended with the same sentences- spoken from different mouths, but identical, rebounding off of her like a boomerang. Again and again and again, and yet hitting her deeper every time.

Until she snapped.

She was suspended, but Jake Reid still has the three tiny scars just below his ear, inflicted by her then inch-long fingernails. He had only asked her why her parents weren't married.

She wasn't asked again.

**VII **

At fifteen, Rose Tyler got taken advantage of.

His name was Jimmy Stone, and he was Older, therefore desired by every one of her friends.

But he'd chosen her, because Rose was confused, still stuck on the whys and hows of her existence, and easily led astray.

And fifteen found her pressed against a wall as Jimmy groaned and writhed in front her, his hands deep under her shirt, thinking that if this was what teenagers were told strictly not to do, that this was the last path she had to cross into adulthood, then it was very much elaborated.

**VIII**

At sixteen, Rose thought that maybe her life wasn't all deep ponderings and cryptic half thoughts after all, and maybe, just maybe, one quiet London girl with no dad and a sad mum could be allowed to love someone.

Because, although Jimmy wasn't always caring, or nice to her, or romantic or anything that the princes in fairytales were supposed to be, he was all Rose had. He was there often enough, and he gave her focus in life. She'd been drifting through it, following along after everyone else as the years dripped by, never stopping to wonder if this was, in fact, _it_.

**IX**

At seventeen, Rose Tyler got her heart broken.

Her universe shrunk, receding into a tiny chasm that didn't allow even the barest flicker of light into it. Jimmy faded away, to become, later on, as just a bitter memory, but at the time he tore her life apart. Her focus, her aspiration, was gone. Her one and only fixed point had abandoned her, ripping himself away and tearing huge gaps in her grasp of what was real and what was fictitious.

She retreated back into her drifting, because it was all that was left.

**X **

At seventeen, Rose Tyler took advantage.

He was a lovely boy, Mickey. Lovely, lovely, lovely.

But that was just what he was; a lovely _boy_.

Older than her and so deemed acceptable, but too lovely, too smitten by her. Rose did not connect with him. And so she drifted, under the pretence- to everyone around her, but also to herself- that she was Happy.

**XI **

At nineteen, Rose's world exploded.

Colours washed back into it, her entire take on everything that she had ever deemed debatable, swept away in the blinding rainbow of prospect and brightness and _hope_.

Her world, expanded in fireworks of flashing colours and brightness and the impendingness of something new and better and proper. All that, in a split second, the barest touch of a different hand. A single, hushed word that meant more to Rose than everything else ever said in all her nineteen years in a place she couldn't understand.

"_Run_!"

And then there he was. The Doctor.

He ran into her world and then never stopped sprinting, dragging her along in a flurry of cheery grins and sarcasm and mixed up potential.

Everything she had lost faith in, such a very long time ago, all squashed into one single person. Shaping her with his smiles, his laugh, his voice. Slowly but surely altering every single cell of her body until she wasn't some random, confused teenager anymore. She was everything that she had forgotten to feel.

Happiness, joy, hope, faith, everything Rose Tyler had let go of, and had chosen instead to bury herself under a torrent of anguish and tears for a world she didn't know, and also wouldn't let herself try to.

**XII **

At twenty one, Rose saw everything.

What could be, what couldn't; what will and what must never, ever be. Saw it all in a single night. Everything, and things beyond that, stretching away into the darkness of Time itself. The end of universes, the start of the next; the one before, the one after. The cell that started it all, and the one that ended it. The spark, flaring in the darkness, and the one that dwindled away until there was only the darkness again, waiting patiently for that next flare.

And she did it for _him_.

The lost sentences, the words that were spoken too many times, the regret in the heart and the laughter on the lips, a thousand billions pinpricks of light in a drawing board, condemned forever to sizzle into life with a zest to life, the breathe, to survive, only the be choked away again. The endless circles, the rules, the rewards the punishments the _never-ending cycles_ of time and space and universes. And Rose understood.

For once in her life, she _knew_.

Everything she'd sought for, everything she'd ever wanted to know, laid out before her to pick and choose from on a whim.

And then the beautiful light of time itself; the beauty of it that no-one would- _could_- ever see. Except her. Bathing in it, soaking in it, drowning, drowning, drowning…

Because beauty hurts, Rose realised, as she drowned and cried and whooped with joy at the sheer peacefulness of knowing that everything would keep on going, with or without her, and that no matter how hard you pleaded or begged or tried, you couldn't ever change it.

But why would you? It was better this way.

The anger, the grief, the panic, the hate. Melded together with the love and the lust and the desire and the frustration and the excitement. To hold your tiny child in your arms; how wonderful it must really be, Rose thought as she screamed into the fire, not yet able to decide whether it was scream of pain or happiness. To look at his face and smile and feel your heart swell with pride and love and everything that was good about the world. And then to hold him again as he closes his eyes, properly, the finality of the simple gesture something you cannot comprehend. The simplicity of the movements, the thoughts and the wonders you can see, if only you'd open your eyes…

And then lips on hers, taking her away from the people and the places and thoughts and the arguments and everything that was wrong and so very, very _right_ about the universe.

Dragging her back. Saving her. Killing her.

**XIII **

At twenty one, Rose lost a friend.

The man who showed her so much, who helped her and hated her and loved her and saved her. Gone, gone, gone forever and ever.

Never stopping, never faltering, never stumbling. Because his footsteps were already over.

**XIV **

At twenty one, Rose Tyler gained a friend.

A man so the same, and so different. Difference was a simple word. Wrong and perfect in equal measure as her universe shrunk and melded and recovered and grew again.

All in his hands.

The hands that were his, and so many other people's. Hers, too. As she stared into the eyes of not one, but twelve people, and she smiled and realised that universes could end and start again but the Doctor would always be the same.

**XV **

At twenty two, Rose Tyler felt something that she had never felt before.

Love.

So strong and crushing, it fuelled her every movement, her every thought and feeling and action. It glowed behind her eyes whenever he looked at her, and made her heart beat with want, and desire, jealousy and pain in equal measure. Making her chest ache with bitterness as other, better women looked at him- jealousy- and then subsequent want as he looked away from them and never looked back. Swell with pride and ownership as he looked away from them, to her, and then never tore his gaze away.

At twenty two, Rose Tyler realised she was wanted- not for her life story, or for her body, but for _her_.

At twenty two, she allowed herself to be vulnerable.


	2. Loosing the Universe

**Loss**

At twenty three, Rose Tyler found out what loss _really_ was.

It was nothing, nothing at all, like what she had perceived. It was disease of the mind and the body and the soul.

Because he was gone.

And she hated him, hated with a vengeance.

For dying. For leaving her alone. Behind.

For never telling her what she'd known all along.

And she hated and loved and lost, the images and memories flitting through her until she couldn't bear to look in the mirror any more.

He was gone and she was a shadow.

Blended together, never ending, not ever. Not two, but one. Journeying on through the stars, even as everything that Rose Tyler had grown to be, faded away.

It was him, all along. Everything was always the Doctor. Sentences started with his name. And ended with it. The world spun when he smiled, and froze when he didn't. Time stopped when he did, and yet the barest touch he gave her sent the seconds reeling away, dancing in the air like atoms and glitter thrown by the same hand. Everything was always his- the Doctors. His dance around the universe. Always his dance, just never his music.

He gave so much more than he took, and yet she has nothing left. Not now. Not when everything is so unbearably dark and cold.

**I **

Things happen for a reason.

It's a saying said over and over again, by a thousand separate lips and minds, and yet they are paper words to Rose Tyler. They crumple and fade away. They are spoken but they mean nothing. They _are_ nothing.

Because Rose Tyler can't give reason to the universe dying. Everything has its time and everything dies. Sarah Jane said that. _He_ said that.

They are the crux of every conversation, and yet nobody hears them. Just paper and ashes, scattered on the wind. So many see-through spoken utterances that are spoken without a thought and have nothing to show for it.

Everything fades away eventually. Everything dies, Rose knows.

Oh, she knows it well.

**II **

Rose goes back, and throws herself to only lifeline she has- Jackie Tyler. The arms that circle her shoulders are not the ones she longs for- too small, too weak, too pathetically human. But Rose clutches at her mother, because Jackie is the only thing left.

She will have to do- to be hugged by the wrong arms, held in the wrong embrace, because it's all there is anymore.

**III **

Another pair of arms hold her, this time male. But not _the_ male she wants.

Not even close. Never ever is.

But Mickey is nice. He whispers kind words in her ear and it soothes some of the pain. Like painting over the cracks that are her life now. It feels good, Rose thinks as Mickey cleans her up with his hugs; to paper over the cracks. To live in a pretend world for a while, even if it hurts even more after.

IV

Which it does. So much.

Everything is red and raw. Time ceases and then speeds up. Nothing is constant, except the pain. Rose knows it all too well.

She is twenty three, and the present hurts; the lightening spark over skin when fingers touch flames. Tomorrow is the burn that follows.

The universe has moved on. The world keeps spinning and yet her universe has not repaired itself. It never will, she thinks. People always think their pain is _the_ pain- nobody else knows or understand what they're going through. They're on their own.

But they're not, Rose knows as she cries silent, dry tears in the dark. They are surrounded by people who know exactly what it means to mourn a loved one.

She isn't. She never will be.

Because it is different, her loss. He is different. What they had, the Doctor and his Rose, was beyond words and yet it was lost so easily.

Never again, she knows.

V

At twenty three and a quarter, Rose Tyler loses her sanity.

Just for a moment, but it is a fleeting second that weighs as much as a lifetime.

She let's go, just for a heartbeat. More than letting go; she dives into the darkness. Willing, pleading, longing.

Because the darkness doesn't hurt.

She has forgotten everything. Anything and everything and something and nothing. They are the same to her. A different language, a different lifetime. Such a long time ago when everything was easier and right and she could understand. The universe made sense.

Now it doesn't.

Everything is altered; everything has been melted out of shape, like plastic held over a heat for too long.

Too long; far, _far_ too long now.

The world has become a circle, and Rose is a square peg. She doesn't fit. It's time she faced up to the truth. The world has moved on now, and there is no place for her anymore.

VI

The song continues, but Rose Tyler has forgotten the words.

She tags along, out of sync with everybody else; just a heartbeat behind, but it could've been a million.

She is lost. Not just in her life, but everywhere.

When you've seen the universe, home becomes a metaphor, she realises. It twists and melds and bends out of shape, until it is not a thing, but a thought. Rose does not know how to make it palpable. She doesn't know anything anymore.

VII

At twenty three and two thirds, Rose Tyler hates her mother.

She went back, back for him, because he cannot leave. She danced through dimensions, and they followed. Jackie and Mickey. Her shadows, now _he_ is gone. They are a shadow's shadow, and they do not know it. They, at least, sort of understand.

There is that.

They understand as much as anyone possibly could. They have their own losses; they know what it is like. They have faced death and pain and anger, so they know.

They've met him. They know.

Oh, they know as much as an outsider ever could.

Because the Doctor is everywhere and everything. He is the fire and the ice and the turn of the sun, the heart of time and he sees _everything_. He _is_ everything. Not just to Rose, but to everyone. A world without its Doctor is a sick world to live in.

Oh, she knows that very well. She right in the middle of a diseased planet yearning for a Doctor that won't ever come back, its longing cry echoing through the hollow universe, right beside her own. .

But right now, Rose Tyler must choose.

Between what she loves and what she cannot exist without. Between a memory and a mother.

It is no competition.

She sees the hurt in her mother's eyes as they suffer together, and Rose feel guilt. So much of it, for everything she has caused her mother. Pain after pain, Jackie has suffered right alongside Rose, because their pain is the same.

But she can't leave him. Not ever.

She will leave one of the only people left, for a whisper.

But she can't help it. He is worth too much.

Even when he's not there, the Doctor is a man to die for.

And that's what Rose does. She walks away, leaving her mother and the last of her life behind. Willingly, for a memory. A memory worth more than a thousand suns.

Perhaps it is better, she thinks.

To live in that old house on that planet where everything stopped; alone and finally at some sort of peace. Because alone is quiet. Alone doesn't judge.

Alone doesn't care, and it does not pity. Rose needs neither.

People; they hurt. Every face is both a stranger's and the Doctor's. In every voice she hears his. Ever hand that hold hers is the fingers of a Time Lord. She cannot forget, because every heartbeat of the people near her echoes his.

Time stops, but the Doctor lives on.

VIII

But they won't let her disappear.

All she wants is to fade away. To live in that house and just… go. That house becomes hers- Rose's, or what is left of her. The people of the planet leave her alone. They've heard of her. They know her story.

Rose Tyler; the human who is not.

She came so many years ago, and does not leave. She is mad. She is lonely. She is suffering.

She is alone in the darkness. And she does not mind.

Because He is there too.

VIIII

Rose was twenty four, still, when she saw the Doctor again.

Just once, by the window. In that house that was cold and the only friend Rose has, she sees him.

Seeing him again, after the months, it breathes life into her.

She hasn't forgotten, that day on the beach. The barest brush against her hand, her lips, her hair. Easily blamed on the wind.

Rose Tyler doesn't believe in ghosts.

But she believes in the Doctor.

She knows he is special. He is different. So very, very different it hurts to call him a being.

He is a god. To her he is everything. Rose Tyler is twenty three, yet she has lived more in her years with the Doctor than the nineteen before they met. Three years, Rose lived, and the time was wonderful. It was poetry in motion. She remembers it all. Every second, every look, every touch she relives every night. Over and over like a broken cassette tape. A treasured, broken cassette that is loved so much it is played anyway, regardless of the glitches and missing bits, the static and the stammers.

Oh yes, Rose Tyler believes in ghosts.

IX

It is not for some years before the Ritual with the candle and the white attic is born, but Rose begins it that day, in the house, on a planet that is the closest she has to home. She sees him again.

Outside, by the fountain. A flicker. A spark.

Enough.

She is running. Running with everything she has left, towards him. She doesn't need to touch, just to see.

His presence is tangible. Rose feels it. Beside her, in front of her. Behind her as she walks. She does not need to hear him, to see him, to look.

To sense him is enough.

After losing the Doctor so completely, Rose Tyler is grateful for anything she has.

For the first time in a year, Rose Tyler smiles.

Properly, and her universe lights up. Like a wizened librarian, flinching at the sudden light after a millennium of lonely twilight.

In a way, Rose Tyler has the Doctor again.

X

But they are not alone. There is the man she has sought comfort in before, who she loved in the human sense of the word, before she found everything and beyond her universe.

Mickey. He does not leave her.

Rose wants the darkness and the Doctor, but Mickey and Jackie stay on, stubborn. She pushes them away, and yet they always return. Rose cannot decide whether they are faithful puppies or bad pennies.

One day she'll need them again, perhaps. Then they will be there. They'll always be there. Because, to them, she is their Doctor.

She has treated them so very badly as the suns turned, and yet… yet they cling on. To them, Rose Tyler is everything. A daughter, an unrequited love; a selfish, stubborn girl to die for. She doesn't know it, but she is covered in the love of a mother and the love of a man.

But it is not the love she wants. With this she cannot exist from. It does nothing.

She doesn't want it.

She pushes it away and then closes her eyes to the tears in her mother's. Rose Tyler has enough pain and guilt already. She doesn't need to share her mother's anguish too.

XI

The pressure is worse now. Years have passed and people talk. Rose Tyler must move on, the Doctor wouldn't want her wasting her life away like this…

But Rose Tyler knows best. She can't- won't- have him replaced. Not by anyone.

But she needs a cover. A shield of normality to hide behind.

XII

At twenty five, Rose Tyler took advantage. Again.

She knew it was cruel, it was selfish, but it is hard enough getting up every day, without knowing she is an awful, awful person. Being cruel to him is not something she minds anymore. He is not the Doctor, therefore he does not matter.

He was always there. He knows. So well now, he knows; that the Doctor is everything to her.

Mickey is not his replacement. Rose isn't looking for one.

He is her shield.

And he loves her enough to allow himself to be used.

XIII

At twenty five and a half, Rose Tyler felt the weight of a ring on her finger.

It did not feel like promise or hope or the future to her- she didn't see the things Mickey did. She sees it in his eyes; his universe still lives. Somewhere, deep inside him, maybe so deep he himself can't see it.

He hopes, one day, maybe, possibly, perhaps; one day, far into the future, Rose may care for him, as more than just a friend. Hardly daring to, but it is there- Mickey is still young. Young and naïve to think Rose would turn from a god, and love _him_ instead.

Maybe he doesn't hope for that. Maybe he hopes for the hope of that.

But Rose knows too much. She's watched the universe weep, and knows that it hurts. She's seen the turn of the universe, the end of this one, the birth of another and it doesn't give her hope. It doesn't fill her with happiness, to know that the universe might end but there is another just around the corner, ready and waiting to burst into a bright, new life.

No, Rose Tyler is too old now to think that just because _existence_ continues, everything lives.

No. She believes in ghosts too solidly for that.

Mickey doesn't, though. He still believes.

Sometimes she wishes for his hope. His human naivety that paints the world around him in such wonderful colours. Rose has none of that. She knows far too much.

He keeps hoping, she keeps waiting.


	3. Fading Into Yesterday

**A/N: Sorry for the wait people, hope this last chapter's worth it... **

**Fading Into Yesterday **

The years pass but the pain does not lessen.

It burns inside of her- no beginning and no end. No difference between Rose and the pain. It has become as much a part of her as an arm or a leg. Something she cannot imagine her existence without it, but she is not quite sure whether she would be sad to see it go or not. Things meld together now. There is no aim or direction, Rose just… is.

Nobody notices. Nobody minds because she is not there. Not anymore. _She_ is, but Rose isn't. The Doctor is gone, and he's taken her with her.

**I **

At twenty six, Rose Tyler seeks a comfort in the only thing that could really, ever be on the same page. Even in the same book.

She's been called Mabel, Agatha, Chelsea. She lies in the darkness, silently ticking, measuring the drip of the universe as it trickles by.

So tired now, Rose knows.

Their grief is the same. It shatters. It hurts. It bonds.

The TARDIS shows her everything. Rose knows it all, now. Sitting there, in the old machine- so old now, even for one of her kind. The last, as Rose is. She is the first and the last of her race, so maybe the TARDIS understands.

Because they have lost him.

But they still have him, sometimes.

Tiny flickers; unseen fingertips on window panes; the ethereal scrape of a chair. Rose Tyler's mind is a map now; cataloguing all these little things. Summoning the world she has created in her head, made by his footprints. Diving into her fictional creations, seeking comfort where there is none. Finding it anyway.

**II**

At twenty seven, Rose Tyler is crueller than she's ever been.

Mickey was nothing but good to her, she knows, and yet she does not care, not anymore. Time has worn away that. She is tired now. So very, very tired. Tired of being hurt and weary, all the time. Time- it all comes back to time.

Time was where it started. And Time is where it will end, on day.

Mickey pants as she straddles him, and Rose looks down at his closed eyes, his clenched teeth, and feels nothing. Mickey, she knows, loves her. Always has, always will, it seems. He craves her touch, her feel, and sometimes she indulges him.

It is cruel, she knows, that after all this time, she is allowing him a scarce hope. Rose knows it will grow, until he thinks she loves him back. But she doesn't. She can't.

So she looks at his face as they fuck, and doesn't see Mickey Smith.

Both of them know who she sees.

Every touch Mickey gives her is not his; every conversation is not with him. When she looks him in the eye, it is not him she looks at.

He knows this.

The Doctor has taken everything- even his existence- from him now.

Mickey knows it too- he can't fight a dead person's memory for the rights to Rose's affection.

Yet he stays regardless, clinging on to whatever bit of Rose Tyler he can get. Because, like her, it is all they have left.

Too empty souls wanting things they can't have.

Rose doesn't know what they do, Mickey and her, but it's not sex. It can't be. They don't have sex, oh no. Rose just doesn't know what to call it.

It's not fucking- there's too much love there. The problem is it's just not shared.

Because she sees _his_ face. Not Mickey's. Never Mickey's.

Rose Tyler is cruel, she knows. To cause a human so much grief and yet revel in it. It makes her feel almost complete to see the look of pain on his face and know she has caused it.

It gives her power. It gives her satisfaction. It gives her control. The only control she has anymore.

Sometimes it feels good to be horrifically cruel, she thinks; to take some of the pain that it eating you away bit by bit, and pass it on to someone else. To watch their face as you see them wince, and think; _yes, I know exactly what that feels like, and if that's happening to me, at least it's happening to you too. _

Cruel is selfish. But is easier than being nice. Being cruel feels deliciously good, Rose thinks.

Even to someone who doesn't deserve it.

**III **

At twenty eight, Rose Tyler is hated.

The one person left that forgave her everything is now the one hurling whatever he can think of at her. He hates, because that's what comes from pain and unrequited love. After a time, it's the only thing left you can do.

Crazy. Obsessed. Cruel. Selfish. Desperate. Mad. Pitiful.

All harsh words, all are fleeting. They do not matter to her, yet they destroy parts of Mickey that have lived on through so much worse.

She does not retaliate. She lets him yell at her, glare at her hatefully through angry and confused tears. Lets him slap her once, twice, three times.

Because she knows she deserves it. And much more.

Rose Tyler is cruel, selfish, obsessed. She knows she is paying the price she should have paid such a long time ago.

She doesn't care. Mickey's ranting was on a Sunday- she turns and walks way from him.

Because Sunday's are the kingdom where Rose Tyler never died. For a single day, Rose lives again.

Through her, and the attic and the candle. Candles measure her time now. Rose likes them because you can see it. The time, dripping by, lost forever in tiny globules of wax. Reminding her that nothing is concrete. It all changes.

**IV **

In amongst the songs of the house, comes his voice.

His beautiful, lovely, lovely, _lovely_ voice that Rose never tires of hearing. Listen to it forever, taking her back to a time when everything meant something, and the universe wasn't such a cold place. But Rose knows it is cold because she has made it so. In that knowledge she lives.

Echoing around her; seeping into the patter of feet in the ceiling, the faint whirr of a sonic screwdriver, Rose hears his voice.

And she is alive again.

Her life, so fleetingly short anyway, condensed into single days. For every six that the universe lives, Rose Tyler exists in one.

The others don't matter, save for when she feels him near her. His hands on her waist as she gardens, the faintest footprint in the flower beds, telling her that he's there. That he's always there. Above time and space and everything. Life and death- they pass him by like water. He has no need for them now. Only _her_.

She and him, supporting each other, holding on through the chaos.

Things recede into a much simpler painting when Rose is with him. Everything is less painful. The thorns are blunted, the anger chilled, in the second his voice drifts into her head.

So attuned to him that she hears him speak now. Words so clear, still so exuberant, as in life. His voice belongs to her, she knows. It is hers. Nobody else's.

Things don't hurt like they used to.

Rose doesn't know- doesn't care- if this is because she is getting older, or because the Doctor is worth more than caring now. All she knows is that the only solid thing is him. Will always be him. Nothing else matters.

**V **

Mickey knows. Of course he does. There's no way he couldn't.

Rose doesn't care. Mickey means less than nothing now. Just a presence, a front. That's all he is.

He still cares, she thinks. Cares enough to keep his women somewhat a secret. But she knows. She always knows. The Doctor told her. But she knew anyway- how could she not?

She does not mind.

Mickey deserves everything the women give him. Everything she can't. He loves one of them too, Rose knows. Sees it on his face, his emotions so clear, even when he tries to hide them. Mickey is not like Rose, she knows. Oh, she knows that all too well. Loving this other woman hurts him. He doesn't want it. Feels obligated to Rose because she is his wife, but Rose is glad. It means that Mickey will live on when she is gone for good. He won't become what she is.

**VI **

At twenty nine, Rose becomes a mother.

Mickey's, of course. Rose feels guilt and sadness for him- she let him, just one last time, before he left. Rose cannot understand the appeal of sex, but then again she's is hardly human anymore. She knows this very well, the Doctor has told her so. Even now, he worries for her.

He shouldn't. Rose doesn't want him to worry for her. Doesn't need it.

Only him. Always him.

**VII **

At thirty two, Jackie Tyler becomes a memory.

Rose is not sad. Her mother suffered enough.

By Rose's own actions, she knows. Her mother didn't deserve anything Rose gave her. Sucking Jackie into her and the Doctor's world was cruel. She should have stayed on Earth, away from the beauty and the pain and all the chaos that Rose's life became.

Her mother can finally rest, Rose thinks as her mother is buried. The last thing of many that Rose can never have.

**VIII**

At thirty five, Mickey leaves and takes her children with him.

Rose is glad for him. He deserves that holiday, after years of work. Rather like setting free the dove you've kept for so long. Longer than you needed to. For your own gain, not the creature's.

But the bird's flown away, and Rose watches him go with a relief. She has ruined enough of his life. Thank god he has enough of it left to rebuild it.

**IX **

Time doesn't hurt anymore.

It feels odd.

Like half of her is missing. Rose has lost a friend, but also an enemy, in losing the hurt. Even now she cannot decide whether it is good or not. An almost nostalgic sense of loss, she feels. Like waking up and realising a scar has gone. A piece of history, as segment of her past, crumpled away.

She is fading away, slowly. Piece by piece, she knows.

And she smiles. It does not matter, when you live life because you must, not because it's what you want. Rose is at a fragile treaty with the universe, not fighting anymore, but not a truce either. There is not enough left of either side for that now. Both have lost too much. The fighting's over but the battle rages on, she knows. She's been fighting for so long now.

It is relief.

**X **

At thirty seven, Rose Tyler stops fighting.

The battle is still being fought, indeed, but by someone else now. She's handed over her reins to somebody _just there_, a person she doesn't and never will know. To someone years younger, or older, perhaps. On the edge of insanity, experiencing for the very first time just what allowing yourself to love and lose a Time Lord can do. She knows only that her time as a fighter is over. She doesn't want it anymore.

To keep on would be unnecessary. Her world is colourless now, washed clean; a new canvas for someone else to paint on.

The universe will blink; once, if she's lucky to be that important, and then move on. - But probably not; Rose isn't that influential. Not like the Doctor was. When he was gone, the universe convulsed. Her response will mostly likely be a thin, imperceptible cough, unnoticed like the billions before it and the countless that will follow.

But she doesn't mind. Rose knows this all and is glad of it. That is the cycle. It is good to know that not everything is an unstable as she is.

She has fought for long enough to stay here, until she'd earned her rite of passage. _He_ wouldn't have let her before.

She wasn't ready, he knew. The Doctor said so.

But she is. So much. Has been for so long. Everything she's longed for, for fourteen long years that have trickled by in endless meaninglessness. Finally being given to her.

Because Rose Tyler now knows what the universe is.

It's losing everything, and still existing.


End file.
